Ich Weiss Jetzt
by Weaver of the Tangled Web
Summary: Oneshot revelations and ponderances of Erik, while he lies dying next to the well... Inspired by a line from Der Himmel Über Berlin.


_Ich weiß jetzt, was kein Engel weiß._

I know now what no angel knows.

I know love, and joy, and heartbreak. I know secrets that no divine being could ever be blessed with.

I know sorrow, and pain, and deceit. I have touched things that an angel could not even dream.

I prayed that she would come, and she did.

_Not even the gods themselves can recall their gifts..._

I would not take it back. I would not exchange these days for all the riches of Persia, for she has blessed me with knowledge that not even Allah could have partaken of. She handed me things that are too sacred to even deserve existence. She gave me that which our God in Heaven must have surely forbidden to demons like myself.

The pain, then, certainly, was a form of compensation, a way to repay the holy ones for my share in their immaculate beauty. She had been so kind, so gracious, they had sent a warrior to steal her from my grasp... "You cannot have this!" they cried, and that warrior swooped down with a fiery blade and chased her demon into hiding.

I have not moved from this place since she left. It is where first we held one another, and where last we touched. It is the little well, with its slimy stones and its sodden earth. I can still smell her, still feel the velvet of her skin and the silk of her hair and the lace of her dress and... and... and. That memory roots me to this damp soil, for if I leave, surely it will fade. If I allow it to exist for even a moment without supervision, it will indubitably slink away into the depths of these caverns, and it will be forever lost to me.

If I hold out my hand, I can almost feel her face coming to meet it. If I close my eyes, I can almost see her standing before me, smiling from behind her tears, granting me all the love that I never deserved. I can still feel her warm hands against my cold skin, and her hot, burning, scorching, searing lips as they touched against my icy corpse's forehead.

Most of all, I can still hear her voice. That voice will never leave me. It was the perfect instrument—the last instrument I shall ever lay my fingers upon. What I made that instrument do, I can never again come near to touching. There will never be another that so seamlessly responds to my fingers' commands.

I played at being an angel, but now I realize the foolishness in that act. I do not envy the divine chorus girls of eternity—doomed forever to sing praises to a god that forced himself upon them—oh no, I do not envy them. I pity them. I pity their state. I pity their hearts. I pity minds that will never brush upon what I have so fully been immersed in. They must live an eternity of emptiness, while I will die full, and complete, and hopelessly in love.

I know now what no angel knows.

An angel cannot love. An angel cannot give themselves fully to a woman or man, for part of them will always be anchored to their god. An angel cannot fully separate themselves from that religion, from that worship, cannot box themselves away and send themselves, like a tiny package in the post, to another. Their heart and mind will always be partly controlled by their god.

I belong, totally and completely, to Mademoiselle Christine Daaé, and that will never change. No god holds me back; no religion has sliced a portion of my soul to save for itself. Even the music fades, in comparison to her. I would never play again, if it meant having her.

She is mine, and I am hers. No angel will ever know that feeling.

I have lived, and loved. I have experienced pain, and regret, and helplessness, and anger, and betrayal, and hate, and I have reciprocated every emotion directed towards me. I have inspired as much pain as I have received; I have killed just as many times as I would have been killed. I have known cold—and, thanks to her, heat. I have known the feeling of soft cloth upon tender skin; I have known the brush of silken hair upon my fingers; I have known the feeling of a woman's gentle lips. Oh, a woman's lips! I nearly thought it would not be so, not ever, not once.

She has blessed me. I have been blessed! Do you hear, God? She has given me things that not even you can know!

Not even God can claim to have felt the touch of a woman's lips.

_Ich weiß jetzt, was kein Gott weiß._


End file.
